


A Lesser Siege

by Wecanhaveallthree



Category: Warhammer 40.000
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-17
Updated: 2019-11-17
Packaged: 2021-02-07 20:07:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21463795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wecanhaveallthree/pseuds/Wecanhaveallthree
Summary: Within sight of the Imperial Palace, a son of Rogal Dorn considers what may lie beyond the final days of the Horus Heresy.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7





	A Lesser Siege

The killing wind came crosswise upon the rude settlements that clung to the inner Palace walls, a fevered scream from a world in pain. It tore loose splinters from terrestrial flesh - iron, ash, chips of bone, shell casings and more - and flung them forward in mindless, primal fury. The storm was more than a storm. It was the terror of millions given voice and form.

Even if one was immune to fear, they would be wise to avoid the killing wind, for it knew no friend, recognised no allegiance. The pale ruins of those who had believed themselves protected lay in paltry heaps: notched and scoured skeletons whom not even the vultures attended.

In the shadow of an ancient triumphal arch crouched a giant in amber battle plate, thunder hammer head-down at his side, presenting as small a target as possible. The Traitor Legions brought Astartes warriors aplenty for their siege of the Throneworld, but just as deadly were the former Imperial Army regiments that marched with them. Mere humans, yes, but humans who had served alongside Space Marines for decades - who knew how easily the gene-enhanced titans could be felled by a simple las-bolt through a helm lens.

This was not a place of importance in the grand scheme. No bastion, no armoury, no gate. There would be no warriors in power armour to contend with in the sand-swept valleys carved between the Palace walls. Only human jackals, ranging for loot and slaughter.

So Galfrid kept his head down and his hammer ready, and busied himself studying the weathered carvings on the arch’s interior.

When Terra had been unified and the ground for the Palace broken, little consideration had been given for the territory and culture of those who would be dispossessed. Unification had been more than a political concept - it was to be a holistic one. Gothic had become the standard language of the Imperium, and those who did not - or would not - learn quickly found themselves isolated and oppressed, unable to find a place for their old identity in the new Imperium. Adapt or perish had been the creed of the day, had been carried far and wide by the Great Crusade.

The oldest carvings and etchings were in forgotten tongues, replaced by graffiti, local pictographs and symbology. The crude scratches showed a linguistic tree growing in reverse: a thousand leaves, language groups pushed together into the space between Palace walls, terminating in the thick, single trunk of Imperial Gothic.

What purpose the arch had served, what moment it celebrated, had been lost in the churn of history. It had been remade, as all things had been, as all humanity would be under the Emperor’s rule.

Perhaps that was the Imperium’s truest strength and most savage act. Taking the distinct, the separate, the unique and different and shaping them into a single style. To lose touch with the past was something that could be borne. After all, humanity had endured a succession of losses, from the Dark Age onwards to the current day of galactic rebellion. But reaching back to those days was impossible, while in contrast, the Imperium allowed compliant worlds to remember what they had been, if only as a reminder of what they should not be again.

Inevitably some would yearn for that past, for good or ill. Perhaps it was a mistake to allow that. Perhaps it should all be wiped clean. Perhaps the arch of history should be remodelled, smoothed over, sandstone like blank vellum eager for Imperials words alone.

And perhaps forgetting the lessons of the past had compelled the traitorous Warmaster to turn on his father, bringing a full half of his brothers into the bargain.

At the very foot of the arch, half-hidden by struggling scrub, had been engraved an eight-pointed star.

The killing wind howled its outrage. The world beyond the arch was invisible, obscured by flying grit and debris. Nothing could move until the storm calmed. In boltholes, between stone buildings, crouched in arches just like this one, the enemies of the Imperium waited, cool and patient. In a way, they had always been there, lurking in the shadows. Whether they were the footpads of Ancient Terra with their stone knives, or the gangers of more recent memory with more sophisticated blades, or the Warmaster’s damned followers today - they had found safe harbour in the forgotten places of the world.

Galfrid laid the head of his thunder hammer against the symbol. It seemed to flare a bloody red as it was eclipsed by cool metal. He thumbed the power stud.

Even without the velocity of a swing behind it, the weapon’s activation shook the entire edifice - but it had withstood greater sieges than this. Dust pattered down from above. A stray brick bounced harmlessly off a pauldron. Galfrid withdrew his weapon, leaving a blank rectangular impression that radiated stress fractures. The eight-pointed star had been erased entirely.

Of course, it would mean the same thing to whatever traitors came looking.

Whatever meaning the star was intended would still be conveyed by its deliberate annihilation. But that was as far as it would go. When this mad war ended, when the streets were remade and the people returned to their homes, nothing would remain to remind their sons and daughters of what had once threatened their world. People would pass beneath the arch and think nothing of the curious impression at its base and soon enough, that too would be covered by the crawling ivies and determined Terran grasses.

As if satisfied, the wind’s howl dropped to a low, forlorn moan. There would be no blue above when it waned entirely: old pollution and new disaster had made that impossible. Yet it would be clear enough to look up to the height of the Imperial Palace and its grand walls.

The traitors would break them. That was easy enough to see. They would tear them down and think it a victory, spilling their hordes into the inner sanctums.

But when they were defeated, when every last fool was thrown down, Terra would be rebuilt. The walls would be raised anew. It would become an anecdote, then a footnote, then a historical curiosity. In centuries to come, people would look up at the towering fortifications and think of them as monuments to a long-ago time. Nothing more.

They would never know what those walls guarded against.

Behind his scarred helm, Galfrid smiled.

An Imperial Fist encouraging the obsolescence of fortifications. This was a mad age, indeed.


End file.
